I love the original Mario Galaxy. Who doesn’t? It is an amazing game and I enjoyed playing it. However, I did feel that the game had its fair share of problems. Also, I did not feel that these problems were properly reflected in the reviews (any of them), and I was shocked when it won game of the year on both GameSpot, Nintendo Power, GameTrailers, Edge and Yahoo! Games (thanks Wikipedia!). Keep in mind, this was the same year we got: Super Paper Mario, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, Metroid Prime 3, Phantom Hourglass, Orange Box, and COD4. All of which were better than the original galaxy, in my opinion (except perhaps phantom hourglass, but even that is pretty close) Once again, I feel the need to point out that I do love the original Galaxy, I just felt it was a little overrated.

Well, I did not think much of it at the time. (acually, I was just happy that Game of the Year was being won by a Wii game) But then Mario Galaxy 2 came out and changed everything. It was everything the original galaxy should have been. It was a hundred times superior…yet, it was eerily similar. It was as if not only every complaint I had with the original galaxy had been fixed, but the things I loved had been improved. For the next few paragraphs, I would like to do a comparison between the two and show the three main reasons why, without a doubt, Super Mario Galaxy 2 is the superior galaxy.

The Hub Worlds

Both galaxies have hub worlds, but they each handle them very differently. In the original galaxy, there is an open world to explore. Within this world, there are several observatories that act as a gateway to several other galaxies. Galaxy 2, on the other hand, has decided to go with a map system, such as found in the older games. The hub world is still there, but it is not required that you explore it in order to get from level to level.

The original hub world just did not work. It was infuriating to have to travel across, and it was near impossible to keep track of what stars were where. Which, at first, seemed odd to me. After all, exploring the hub world was my favorite part of both Mario 64 and Mario Sunshine. But after some thinking I came to realize why it did not work. One of the main reasons was size.

Mario 64 contained 15 courses spread out over a huge castle. (plus a few hidden areas) Each painting let to one world, and it was pretty easy to memorize where your favorite courses were. Mario Sunshine contained 8 worlds (not counting the airstrip) spread out over a large hub world. Both of these are a relatively small amount of worlds to keep up with and each world was used several times. Now Galaxy 1 has 6 observatories, each having 4 or 5 galaxies, plus several hungry luma galaxies. I was able to count 37 diffrent galaxies. That is a lot of galaxies to keep up with! This type of hub world structure just does not hold up well with 37 galaxies.

The map structure, however, is proven to work great with a large amount of levels. This way, Galaxy 2 keeps all the fun of the hub world but without the frustration.

Level Design

Now, I am not saying the level designs in Galaxy 1 were bad. The way gravity would twist and turn blew our minds. They took the new concept of being in space and really made it work. They completely changed our perspective of what a platformer could be. But the fact that this was such a new way of looking at platforming, meant that they were inexperienced with it. Galaxy 1 was very experimental, but by Galaxy 2, they knew what they were doing. The levels just work better in Galaxy 2.

More Variety

While Galaxy 1 did have plenty of things to do, it started to feel repetitive after a while. Galaxy 2, on the other hand, included not only all the concepts from the first game, it also added several new power-ups, Yoshi, and power-ups for Yohsi. Plus, they added sidescrolling levels in addition to the regular levels. With this large amount of variety, there is no way it can get repetitive. There are just so many different concepts in this game! Variety is the spice of life, and …um, nevermind. I was going to make a lame pun about the spicy chilli pepper that Yoshi eats, but I think I will spare you from the puns. (*shakes fist angrily at punpunpun.com* 😉 )

And that is the main three reasons why Mario Galaxy 2 is the best Galaxy! I have a few more reasons, but they are minor and don’t really deserve to be brought up here. (Plus they tend to center more around my personal tastes than actual problems) I hope you enjoyed reading this!

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7 Responses to “Why Mario Galaxy 2 is the Better Galaxy”

They are definitely worth playing. Though I would personally suggest skipping the first one and going straight to the second one. The stories are not connected in any way whatsoever, and like I said, the second one is just better.

Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there isn’t particularly a story. I mean technically Bowser’s collecting galaxy energy to become the ruler or something but it only comes up at the beginning and end of the game. I would recommend playing the first one before #2, I mean the first one is still an excellent game and hopefully it’ll make you appreciate the second one more.

The first game does have more of a story, but it is not really a good one and it doesn’t really matter in the long run. Galaxy 2 kinda rewrites the old story…actually I think of galaxy 2 more as a remake rather than a sequel.

but yeah it is your basic mario story. Galaxy 1 has a whole subplot about princess rosalena and the lumas, but it really does’nt matter that much.